A pearly smile always went with the hair. I invested in a packet of baking soda toothpowder and spent ages brushing my teeth, scrubbing the silver boxes of my brace, while listening to the BBC World Service. Uncle Max had fobbed our dad ofiF with a shortwave radio when the bottom fell out of another deal.
'It's just the thing' - my English teacher Mrs Arnold told
me how to find the right fi-equency - 'if you want to hear long words in action.'
Sollydarnosh, lessay-fair, dayus-x-mackinna, coo-day-tar, Devoorjack: I discovered how to get my tongue around the words I stumbled on in the newspaper. It was like tuning in to the future, learning the language they spoke there. I smuggled headphones under the covers, which helped to tame the panic that snaked through me whenever I woke in the middle of the night.
After school and on weekends, I used to lie on my bed for ages, letting pictures unroll inside my eyelids like a film. My Future. A big house, fiill of light, books lining the walls, swishy clothes, holidays in hot places, a lovely man, smiling .. .
The reel would snag and run out when Mum and Dad burst into screams or started banging around downstairs — slapping each other, knocking furniture over, threatening vile stuff. When they had had enough, the house would calm down to a murmur, the pair of them nursing their wounds over a pot of tea, talking about what was on telly, acting like nothing had happened. I would lie back on my bed, but my eyes would refuse to close. At times I could calm down by curling up, tucking my fists inside the cuffs of my jumper, pulling into myself.
Sometimes I got sick of waiting for my own life to start. The walls of our house felt as if they were closing in. It was hard to breathe. I was desperate to chisel the brace oflF my teeth, to let my mouth mingle with someone else's. Yet I knew that, even if my teeth were already straight, nothing romantic could happen to me while I lived at home. It was often sweetness and light: Mum lolling on Dad's lap, the two of them laughing and kissing, deep tongue kissing, while us kids tried to watch telly. But fights broke out so suddenly -
spurting insults and fists, ashtrays flying - it wasn't safe to bring anyone in.
Laurie, Sarah and I had a crush on Jehovah's Witnesses, who eased through the front door with their nice, soothing voices and put our dad on his best behaviour. We regarded them as if they had been dropped from heaven to ring on our doorbell. I rushed to brew a pot of tea, Laurie scrabbled for biscuits to arrange on a plate. We wanted to keep them there, nodding at Dad's theories about the buggerin' government, flapping leaflets under our mother's nose, droning on about God.
Where's God? — the earth would have opened if I ever spoke up - When we close the door behind you?
Dad railed against the miniature bibles that the Jehovah's Witnesses had pressed on us - propaganda, he called them, chock-a-block with secret messages injected by the government. Laurie and I pretended to agree with him (that was always the best plan), and kept our bibles out of sight. But at bedtime, before we turned out the light, we would spend ages devouring the tiny print, chapter and verse. It was as if we were doing homework for God. A different prayer for each day of the week, we had lined up, with special adjustments to add emphasis when things were really grim, or to show gratitude if we thought we saw a glimmer at the end of the tunnel.
Since God never seemed to come up with the goods, we eventually found ourselves concentrating less on prayers and more on high marks at school. Laurie was in love with languages, especially German and French, and a bit of Spanish. She loaded her tongue with foreign words, which no one else in our house could understand. Science struck me as reassuring: so many equations to rely on; always a right and wrong answer.
The Periodic table was imprinted under my eyelids. My spirit soared when I assembled molecules in Chemistry - I felt I had my hands on the universe, juggling red and green styrofoam spheres, connecting them with white straws to reveal the patterns that lay behind everything.
When I tuned in to God from my pillow, I recited the results of tests I had passed in sciences and maths, the dates of historical treaties, battles, births and deaths, tricky constructions in French, the lines of war poems I had learnt by heart:
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark green fields; on — on — and out of sight.
My feet were in a plastic bucket, my hair was standing on end. As the newly elected head girl, it was my privilege to demonstrate the Van der Graaf generator at our school's summer open evening. Kids in the lower years held their breath when I stroked the silver globe. A current of electricity passed through me. Older lads shoved to have their own hair shocked into the air.
'Stick your feet in the bucket before you touch it.' I stepped out to let Godfrey, the head boy, take over, although his hair couldn't spring up since his Afro was shaved so short. 'You have to earth yourself
Mr Galsworthy, our headmaster, had asked me to split my time between the labs, chatting to convince fathers in nice jumpers to send their sons to study science at Whitbrook, and the English room, where my poem about war, skin colour and nuclear meltdown was spread across the wall on six sheets of paper. 'It's not too long,' my English teacher Mrs Arnold had assured me, when I got into a flap with Sellotape: 'It deals with big questions about human nature; it's what we call epic'
Although I would have to leave our school because the sixth form had closed down, I had tried to keep all of my favourite teachers happy by promising to do A levels in Biology and Chemistry, as well as English Literature and General Studies. One moment I was determined to become a lawyer, defending desperate women like my mother, the next I knew I was destined to save lives as a doctor. Whatever career I chose to
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pursue, Mrs Arnold insisted, it would be sacrilege to give up reading and writing poems.
'It's your element, Andrea.' She talked about Literature, capital L, as if it were a company I could work for, or a country I might live in.
'Lit-ter-atch-yoor.' Tamsyn and I sighed over the same vague dream, built on the feelings we got - velvety, spiky, watery, like fire - just from words.
Whereas I used to hide the fact that I smoked cigarettes or swigged whisky or wagged days off school, the things I now kept secret at home were words. Long, complicated ones I discovered in stories by Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy and the Bronte sisters, whose books I was given by Tamsyn or Mrs Arnold. Short, simple ones that would sparkle unexpectedly in the middle of poems. Long lion days. Life with a Hole in it. That vast moth-eaten musical brocade. The Importance of Elsewhere.
I worshipped Philip Larkin, who got stuck into the dullest corners of life and picked up ordinary, everyday stuff to smack you with art. In the hollows of afternoons I Young mothers assemble . . . Behind them . . . An estateful of washing, I And the albums, lettered I Our Wedding, lying I Near the television. It was as if he could step inside people's skin, to take photographs of them from the inside out:
Their beauty has thickened. Something is pushing them To the side of their own lives.
I would pore over the poetry anthology from school, feeling words gathering and buzzing inside me, like the mob of bees inside the box in Sylvia Plath's poem: Small, taken one by one, but my god, together! When Dad was having a go at me, poking his finger against the bony bit of my chest and ranting,
assuring me I was good for nothing, I imagined letting them loose like swear words, only carrying a more beautiful sting.
'A fine combination of passion and practicality.' The admissions tutor congratulated me on my unconventional mixture of proposed A levels, when I went to be interviewed for a place at Xaverian Sixth-Form College. 'Now then, what are your ambitions for the fiiture?'
It was like being on one of the game shows my dad loved to watch, sweating to come up with the answer that would win me a ticket into the college. The very phrase 'the fiiture' made me want to rus
h to the loo, out of excitement. My head crowded fiill of all the things I had ever dreamed of becoming: a firefighter, an air hostess, a farmer, a pilot, a lawyer, a doctor, a writer. I was tempted to mention my fantasies about being a writer, pouring stuff out of my head on to paper, so that people could read it and let it seep into their own heads. But I was afi-aid that the man in the suit would laugh.
I imagined trying to squeeze my hopes out in nice, round sentences. In the end, I stuck to the subject of my A levels and talked about going on to study law at university. It was hard to concentrate, to speak without trembling. I could hardly think beyond the school's glorious old-brick buildings, like castles, each set on an island of grass, gravel walkways lacing them into one green, brainy world. Christian Brothers floated along the paths, black gowns in fiill sail. The school was tucked between the posh Victorian houses behind Withington Road - a rush of Indian restaurants and sari shops, fijrious traffic and exhaust fumes. I would never have guessed it existed, if it hadn't been for Tamsyn and her mother, who knew about these things. After visiting Shena Simon, the shabby Institute for Further Education where you could combine English with
History and Hairdressing, Tamsyn had insisted that we both apply to Xaverian.
'If they're Christians,' she had it all worked out, 'it won't matter that we're not Catholic'
My secret fear was that I was not posh pnough, as well as not Catholic enough, to go to such a fancy college. I was terrified that they would see Tamsyn's Marks and Spencer clothes and let her in, that they would know mine were secondhand, and I would be left out in the cold. But on the day of the interview, I looked as smart as everyone else, in a long and clinging greeny-blue skirt which made me feel like a mermaid, from the Dress for Less reject shop, topped with an ivory blouse that my mother let me have on credit fi-om her catalogue. Instead of turning up their noses because we were fi-om Whitbrook Comprehensive, the teachers at Xaverian seemed all the more impressed by the promise shown by Tamsyn and me, since we had managed to do so well in spite of going to such a rough inner-city school. The question of being Catholic never came up, afi:er they had read our school reports. We might be heathens, but we were both predicted to get eight or nine O levels, the majority of which promised to be As.
'Gluttons for punishment, or what?' Mark Harris, like a lot of the kids at school, saw no cause for congratulations when he heard that Tamsyn and I had been accepted to study for A levels. Most of the fifiJi year were in awe of our stupidity, not our brains. No one could understand why we were so keen to carry on, especially not all the way to university, where we would be stuck until we were twenty-one.
'I'd be bored shidess, meself.' Robbie Carter was already making money as a trainee mechanic, fixing cars at the garage where his dad was in charge.
Some kids had dropped out before the exams to take up jobs in shops or on building sites, although it was against the law because they were under sixteen. A few girls were busy having babies; Borstal had nibbled away at the number of boys. Getting O levels, everyone agreed, was a bit poncy but fair enough if you had it in you; plodding on after that was a sheer waste of time. Angie was starting out as a shampooist in the hairdressers on Princess Parkway, Jayne had a job at her local chemist's, Nicky's mother had signed her up to work at the cashout as soon as the new Gateway supermarket was unveiled in Withington.
'Aren't you dying to get out, like?' They seemed sorry for me when I let myself in for two more years of school: 'Don't you want to make loads of dosh?'
'You're sixteen.' Dad was always pushing me to get out and make loads of dosh: 'When I was bloody well sixteen, I was grafting to keep me mam as well as meself'
He reckoned I should at least be putting a few pounds towards the family food money; but I wasn't even making my ten pounds a week any more, since Auntie Livia and Uncle Max's shop had gone bust. So as soon as the exams were over, I put on my long greeny-blue skirt and shuffled up and down Withington Road in search of a job.
'As luck would have it' - the greasy bloke who ran the cinema stared at my hips as if he could see through my skirt -'our matinee usherette just walked out.'
Instead of stopping to wonder why, I stepped straight into her shoes. I couldn't think of anything more glamorous. I would get to see all the films for free.
After sitting through seven showings of My Little Pony, having sugared popcorn chucked at me along with words like Fuck and Cunt (which sounded worse out of the mouths of
kids), not to mention the manager's leery looks, I was practically blind.
'It must have been all them hours in pitch black,' my mother mused. She and Dad suspended their usual sniping when they noticed me squinting, nose pressed up close to the telly.
'Don't worry,' I urged: 'I've booked an appointment at the optician's.'
What I didn't tell them was that Thomas Hardy was to blame. All week, pink and blue ponies had talked and sung and done little dances across the cinema screen. The only way to stay sane had been to sit at the back, my usherette's torch trained on the pages of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, one of the cracked-spine paperbacks that Mrs Arnold had passed on to me after clearing out her loft at home. Straining to read in the dark-yellow glow of my torch, I imagined myself in the place of Tess: a poor milkmaid transformed into a goddess by the secret, mystical light of the morning. My cyts began to ache. Eventually, stinging made them water. I read on, obsessed by the idea that I was tainted, like Tess. The chance of a lovely life ruined by shamefiJ things in the past. My heart clobbered and rose when blood seeped through the ceiling after Tess killed Alec, the one who had spoiled her. Maybe she could slash her way to a happy ending with Angel by cutting the other man out? But even in a story, it wouldn't work out that way: my heart sank as Stonehenge loomed and Tess faced her dead end.
For years, I had lived with a sticky sense of being spoiled. I could almost feel it clogging my veins, making me feel mucky inside.
'Your face will take you places, luwie.' Auntie Livia used to stroke my cheek when I worried that I would never get anywhere.
Tess's face hadn't saved her: it had been her downfall as well
as her way out. And once you were ruined, it seemed, that was that. But - I reasoned with myself - if I never spoke about it to anyone, perhaps I wouldn't end up spoiled by my past.
I clutched at the thought of my O levels, haunted by the clang of fate: Too late, too late, too late.
Tamsyn and I went to pick up our results, and wandered back down the echoing school corridors with a straggle of other kids, grades flapping on white strips of paper like bandages or white flags of surrender. All the deadly boredom and bullying that had crowded the place; it felt like the end of a five-year war.
'Six As, two Bs, and a C,' I told Tamsyn, whose results turned out to be slighdy heavier on the Bs and Cs, though both of our grades were more than enough to let us into Xaverian College come September.
'Wow.' She looked at my fist, clenched around the scrap of paper, as if it might blow away. 'You must be ecstatic'
'Yeah.' My insides would have done somersaults at the sight of my grades, if they hadn't been weighed down by things at home.
I opened the spiralbound sketchbook that the school let me take home to keep after finishing my O level in art. A secret diary. I had never dared to keep a real one, using words, but here I could pore over ink strokes, chalk dustings and coloured pencil shades, remembering the feelings - invisible to the rest of the world - moving through me when I made them. A dark, bare-chested man facing the sun in a desert, his skin a blend of pencil crayons and spittle rubbed in with my fingertips; a girl borne on wings fiill of veins and tiny eyes; a lamp-post, seeping eerie streams of light.
At the back there were blank pages.
Sometimes, if Dad had hit one of us or Mum had blown her top, telling us all to go to hell before locking herself in the bathroom, I would lie on my bed, sharpen my pencil, and hold it over the clear white sheet. The lead point hovered. I imagined it stabbing through the paper as
if it were skin, leaving gashes like bullet holes. But something kept me from lashing out to wreak havoc. It would be a terrible waste. And there were things I didn't want to show up on paper. The idea of damaging something made me feel afraid, as if I might be sucked into the dark stuff in our house.
Instead - hovering, hovering - I let go of the rage in my head while my hands lost themselves in light, airy strokes, unravelling lines to make a map of some other world.
*OfF your arse!' Dad chivvied Laurie and me to empty, wash and polish the ashtrays so that he and our mother could fill them back up. 'Hop to, jump to!' We had to keep up a steaming supply of coffee and tea, replenishing the mugs at their feet while they sat on the settee, soaking up telly.
'In our day...' They moaned about the flaming amazing opportunities thrust under the noses of the next generation. Mum sparked with pride when one of us passed a test or won a prize, but Dad would soon make sure it tipped into bitterness.
'Oi! I thought I told you to brush the stairs!' They always found some cleaning task to shove on to our shoulders if they caught us reading a book, sketching, getting ready to go out to meet friends. It was easier not to go out at all, to avoid the anger it would stir up, ready to burst in your face when you stepped back through the door.
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